


The Bridge and the Current

by Snickfic



Category: Original Work
Genre: Arranged Marriage, Body Modification, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Time, M/M, Mpreg, Oviposition, Wedding Night, Xeno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-26 11:02:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17744696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snickfic/pseuds/Snickfic
Summary: The terms of the treaty were this: Illilyl would come from the sea and marry Jem, and in return, Jem would carry Illilyl's children. Never mind that the men of Jem's race weren't generally capable of that.





	The Bridge and the Current

**Author's Note:**

  * For [meru](https://archiveofourown.org/users/meru/gifts).



> Once I had this idea, it wouldn't let me go, despite several false starts. I hope you enjoy the result, meru!

It was all done now: the speeches by the officiants as they presided, one by one—first the priest of the earth, then the priest of the fields, then the priest of the sky, then the high chaplains of each of the four armies, then a minister of the courts. The blessing by General Amenu, commander of the forces of the Four Winds, leader of the coup that ended the Hegemony of Earth. (Traitor, some would say. Prime minister of state, now. Jem’s mother.) The handclasping, Illilyl’s cool webbed hands in Jem’s tanned ones. Jem had squeezed lightly and looked into Illilyl’s huge, shining eyes—weeping a little under the lights, though they’d been dimmed specifically for him and his retinue—and murmured “Thank you,” soft enough that no one but the general and Illilyl himself could hear. Illilyl had blinked his inner eyelids and inclined his head.

It was all done, and now there was only this, the two of them in the largest of the suite of rooms that now would be theirs, as the Bridge of State (that was Jem) and his partner, the Current Unto the Sea (Illilyl, of course). The door was shut behind them, the sconces were dimmed for Illilyl’s sake, and now they had only this final act to perform.

“We could wait,” Jem said now, at the last, after he’d spent so many months of negotiation to get them to this point and so many years at war before that. Still he said it, and then he held his breath.

“Do you wish to?” Illilyl said, in that low warble that was his land-voice. 

“We shouldn’t,” Jem said wryly. “Only—”

“It’s strange for you. As this—” Illilyl cast a glance around the cool stone walls of their chambers. “—is strange for me.”

“Kind of,” Jem agreed, though he felt that what must come next was a little different from having unfamiliar architecture in one’s sleeping quarters. 

“Let me see you,” Illilyl said. From someone else that would have been proper bedroom talk, but Illilyl watched dispassionately as Jem sat on the divan and shed the layers of his wedding clothes, beginning with the brightest tunic and on down until he wore only his trousers. 

Jem shouldn’t have felt so odd, untying his drawstring and letting the trousers fall around his hips. He’d commanded a fleet, drawn up battle strategies, met the people of the sea at the bargaining table time and again. He had a white scar across his shoulder from a spear, a patch of marbled skin across his arm where acid had fallen. He was thirty-four years old, battle-tested, married. 

And he had a strange new slit below his navel. 

He swept his hand over it, because that was less uncomfortable than meeting Illilyl’s eye. “I’ve been assured it’s functional—by your life sculptors and ours.”

Jem didn’t know what to expect next. He’d seen a good deal of Illilyl’s people during the negotiations, but almost nothing of Illilyl himself. He knew him mostly by reputation: the sea king’s second son, fierce in the sea’s martial arts, reserved. Only once during the negotiation had they met, and that only because Jem insisted on it. _I’ll not marry someone unless I’ve heard agreement from the man’s own mouth._ And so after some days he was escorted to the water, and Illilyl walked heavily to the shore, clearly not accustomed to land, and in that low warble Illilyl agreed to be the other half of this peace match.

And that had been it, until Illilyl came ashore two days ago to marry him. He’d spent those two days as reserved as rumor said, blinking his secondary eyelids as colors played across his skin—emotions, ideas, whole thoughts that Jem couldn’t begin to guess at. He would have to learn.

For now Illilyl remained a mystery to him, though, and so Jem was very surprised indeed when Illilyl knelt awkwardly between Jem’s knees and extended a hand towards Jem’s middle. “May I?”

“Sure,” Jem said, flushing hot and unable to do a thing about it. “Sure.”

He held very still as Illilyl flattened both palms against Jem’s belly and closed his eyelids—the milky inner set and the thick blue-green outer ones, too. His touch was cool, and his breath quiet. He knelt there for a minute or more while Jem tried not to feel like a living icon of Saint Aia, Mother of All.

At last Illilyl’s eyes opened again and he took his hands away. “This is careful work.”

“Yeah, the guild put a lot of time into, uh, it. Me.” 

“Your men do not carry children, generally. Yet you are willing.”

If Illilyl was to live on land as a guarantee, then the sea required a concession of its own. “I’d be willing to do a hell of a lot more to settle this peace between us,” Jem said, on comfortable ground at last. “It’s strange, but it’s not—it doesn’t matter. I’ll do what’s needed.” He’d have to repeat those words over to himself a few more times to get him through the next hours—the next months, as he carried the pregnancy to its conclusion. “Like you,” he added.

“Me.” 

“I know it’s uncomfortable for you here. We’ve expanded the baths, you’ll have your cook and your attendants, but I know this is no—day at the beach?” Jem offered this sheepishly. Who the hell knew how Illilyl’s people viewed days at the beach.

The pale green skin at the base of Illilyl’s throat darkened. Jem had been around enough folk of the sea to recognize that this was, in the broadest sense imaginable, a smile. By some miracle, he’d gotten Illilyl to smile. Jem smiled back, and then wondered if that meant anything to Illilyl at all. “Um, you know I can’t change colors.”

“You did just a moment ago,” Illilyl said. “Pink. All—” He curled his fingers to encompass all of Jem.

“Okay, I turn _one_ color. But it means all kinds of different things. I can’t talk with my skin, like you can.” Surely Illilyl knew this. Jem was insulting him. Jem—

Jem had negotiated the most delicate treaty in three generations, and now he’d turned pink again while his stomach twisted in anticipation of what was to come. “I’m sorry,” he said, scrubbing his hand against his face.

Illilyl blinked at him, wetting his eyes, so that now they shone liquid and black in the room’s low light. “Why?”

“I don’t know how to proceed,” Jem admitted.

“You’ve never done this before,” Illilyl said. “…have you?”

“Certainly not.”

“Nor I,” Illilyl said.

“That’s some comfort.”

“Are you afraid?”

Damn that warble of his, that masked his tone beyond recognition. Damn the colors playing across his skin that Jem couldn’t read, and damn his king under the sea for sending him here, and damn Jem himself most of all for agreeing to it. “Yes,” Jem said.

“It can be pleasurable,” Illilyl said.

“I’m not sure I’m _that_ functional.”

“Would you prefer to wait?” asked Illilyl, turning Jem’s own question back on him.

It was tempting, so tempting. But—“Better not. You’ve got your physician hanging around to make sure I’m—to make sure it’s taken. The sooner we can send good news back to your kingdom, the better. It’ll certainly ease a lot of people’s minds, not least my mother’s—but you know all this.”

“Peace,” Illilyl said. He took Jem’s hands between his own, and Jem felt a moment of pathetic gratitude.

“I didn’t think I’d be so nervous,” Jem said ruefully. He hadn’t really thought about it at all. It had to be done, so he’d do it. And now here he was.

“How would you proceed if I were a man of the earth?” Illilyl asked. “If we were wed and wished to consummate our marriage, how would we begin?”

After a brief, horrified pause, Jem said, “You do know something of how we fuck, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Illilyl said, readily enough that it might have meant impatience. “I didn’t ask how you fucked—” It was such an earthy word, in his mouth. Jem had never noticed before. “—I asked how you would begin.”

“Oh. Um. Kissing, I suppose. Or—touching.” Jem shoved his unexpected embarrassment away. This was diplomacy, a cultural exchange, one more duty for him to perform. “Do your people kiss? On the mouth.” Clearly he’d wasted those late-night meals with Shallaluli and Elleel, the nearest thing to friends he’d found among the delegation from the sea. He’d asked the wrong questions.

“We do,” Illilyl said. He leaned in, and Jem tipped his head to catch Illilyl’s mouth. It was a kiss. It was not the finest Jem had had, but it was familiar. He adjusted his angle and tried again, and that was better. Somehow he’d expected Illilyl to taste of salt, of the sea, but instead he tasted only of wine and a hint of the roast served at their wedding feast.

Illilyl had clearly taken Jem’s other instructions to heart, too. His hands began to cautiously roam over Jem’s shoulders. Jem took that as permission to cup Illilyl’s jaw. Illilyl hummed with what might have been approval, which seemed promising, but then he pulled away. “It would be best for me if we did this in water.”

 _This_. “Right,” Jem said. “To the bath, then.”

While the sculptors had been preparing Jem’s body for his marriage, the engineers had been preparing this suite. Where there’d once been a one-person bath set in the stone floor, there was now a great pool, eight feet by six and four feet deep at the far end. “It’s not much of a sea,” Jem said looking down into the still waters.

“A lagoon,” Illilyl corrected—as criticism or reassurance, Jem couldn’t guess. Without ceremony, Illilyl untied his loose, rough-hewn robe and stepped out of it.

He was well-muscled, was Jem’s new husband, and comfortable in his nudity, as were all his people that Jem had met. He was mostly a soft blue-green, paler on his chest and belly and darker down the back, and streamlined top to bottom: ear-fins swept back away from his face, hairless, his sex organs tucked away.

Unlike the other sea folk Jem had met, Illilyl’s belly sloped gently outward. Jem’s gaze caught on the swell. “Whose eggs are they?” he asked.

Illilyl followed Jem’s gaze and closed his hand over himself. “You’re friends with Shallaluli, I believe.”

“Shallaluli?” Jem said, startled. “From your diplomatic delegation?”

“If you were of my people, we would have chosen an egg-mother together, someone we both knew and respected. This was as close as I could come.”

It was, as always, impossible to read anything in Illilyl’s tone. A spotted pattern was forming in the base of his throat and down the insides of his arms; no doubt it meant something. Something important, perhaps. Jem ventured closer and cautiously thumbed across Illilyl’s wrist. “What do these marks mean?”

“Please don’t concern yourself with them,” Illilyl said, but he didn’t pull away.

“If you prefer.”

Several moments passed before Illilyl said, “The sea feels very far away.”

It was the most personal thing Jem had ever heard him say. “I’m sorry,” Jem said, uselessly.

Illilyl shifted out of Jem’s grasp. “It is as you said. We do what’s needed.”

“Yeah.” There didn’t seem to be much else to say to that. Instead Jem let go of his trousers, which he’d been holding up, and stepped out of them. “Well, then. In the water?” Without waiting for an answer, he crossed to the bath and lowered himself to the edge. The water was lukewarm: not uncomfortably cold for him, not too hot for Illilyl. Jem resigned himself to a great many lukewarm baths in the future. He hopped down into the water and settled on the bench built into the side. The disturbed water lapped at his nipples.

Illilyl followed him in. He ducked under the water as naturally and gracefully as a porpoise, and he floated there for a good thirty seconds before resurfacing.

“Better?” Jem asked.

Illilyl hummed, deep in his throat. “You know how to prepare for the laying?”

“I have instructions,” Jem said cautiously. The physicians who’d guided the work on Jem had explained everything thoroughly: the laying process, the incubation period, the birth. Jem put his fingers to his slit. “I’m meant to massage it.”

“If you like. Or I could.”

Heat pooled in Jem’s gut, utterly unexpected. He ignored it. The act would be unavoidably intimate, but not like that. “If you like,” he repeated, inanely.

Illilyl’s throat darkened, pleased at Jem’s answer. Before Jem could really think about that, Illilyl ducked under the water again and swam right up to Jem. He traced the edges of Jem’s slit with his finger; so far, so good. But then he drifted closer and licked across the opening, and it—

Saints help him, it felt _good_. It made Jem’s toes curl a little. He’d done a little exploration just after the sculptors had finished their work; the results had been uncomfortable at best. But the soft lave of Illilyl’s tongue was nothing like the prod of Jem’s thick, awkward fingers. Jem gripped the edges of the stone seat while Illilyl continued licking all around Jem’s slit. Then, back and forth across the edges. Jem’s slit had edges now, because it had begun to open, and they were very, very sensitive.

And then—“Fuck,” Jem said, unable to hold the word in.

Illilyl heaved himself up, breaking the surface. “Did I hurt you?”

“No, no.” Jem was definitely turning pink again, but Illilyl kept staring at him, so apparently the flush alone was not sufficient explanation. “No, it didn’t hurt.”

“It was uncomfortable.”

“Uh, no.”

Illilyl took this in. “Would you like me to continue?”

“If you would,” Jem said, a little breathless. In the name of diplomacy and open communication, he added, “It felt good.”

“Good,” Illilyl said, and dropped below again. This time he rested his hands carefully on Jem’s bare thighs, and he put his whole mouth to Jem’s slit. He seemed no longer content with licking over the opening; now he put his whole mouth and sucked. The sensation had Jem gripping the bench again, trying to hold himself still.

Then, oh glory and wonder, Illilyl pushed his tongue in. Jem groaned, heedless now of the noise he made. Each tickle of pressure was like a wire tugging in the very pit of his stomach. He was hopelessly hard. Very much longer and he would come without even a touch except the water’s uncaring caress.

Illilyl’s head popped above the surface. His nostrils flared open. His people could stay under for twenty minutes with ease, and forty minutes with effort. “Time for a breather?” Jem asked.

“I need to breed with you now. If you will,” Illilyl added. “If you are sure.”

Jem had forgotten, but it didn’t matter. “I’m sure. For peace.”

“For peace,” Illilyl repeated, unreadable as ever. 

Jem let Illilyl direct him to stand by one of the walls—something to lean against if he needed. “Can _I_ help?” Jem asked, much too late. “With—anything?” He reached for Illilyl, stroking along his ribs, letting his hand fall to Illilyl’s hip. 

“Preparing you has prepared me,” Illilyl said. He took Jem’s hand and brought it very low on his belly, where Jem would’ve looked for a cock and where, half an hour ago, Illilyl had had nothing at all. Now Jem’s fingers caught on a long protrusion, and Illilyl tensed. 

“Is this it, then?” Jem said.

“Yes.”

“Okay,” Jem said. Okay. “Can you—” he cut himself off.

“What is it?”

“Can I kiss you again?” Immediately Jem regretted the words. He regretted them more the longer Illilyl blinked at him. 

Just before Jem took them back, Illilyl leaned in and put his mouth to Jem’s. Jem closed his eyes, gripped Illilyl’s waist, moved against his thin green lips. He let himself pretend for a moment longer that this was ordinary sex, that the worst that could come of it was that the sex was bad and the aftermath awkward. 

He opened his mouth to Illilyl, and his mind caught-- _now_ Illilyl tasted of salt? Then he realized he was tasting himself. He had the flavor of his own new-sculpted slit on his tongue. 

Jem pulled away and opened his eyes. “All right,” he said, husky with nerves. He endured Illilyl’s careful inspection of him, no doubt looking for patterns in the flush of his skin. “Well?”

“This may be awkward at first,” Illilyl said. Those parts of his skin that changed colors had gone blotchy and dark, and the evidence of his feelings was some comfort, even without knowing what the feelings were.

“We’ll be awkward together,” Jem said. The words felt weightier after he said them. _Together_. 

But there was no time to think about that, because Illilyl was pressing him up against the wall of the bath. Jem let himself be manhandled, trusting Illilyl to get them situated. “I need—” Illilyl said, and then he reached behind Jem to grip the edge of the bath with both hands. He bounced a little, up and in, so that his shaft pressed against Jem’s navel. “Usually we do this underwater,” Illilyl said, in what even Jem could recognize was a grumble. 

Then Illilyl shifted minutely so that his shaft caught on Jem’s slit, and Jem nearly whited out. It took him a couple of seconds to pull his scrambled attention back together. “Almost,” he said. He put a cautious hand on Illilyl. His shaft was stiff, like a ready cock, but he barely reacted to Jem’s touch, so perhaps the shaft was less sensitive. Jem took a sharp breath and guided the tip to his slit. “Right—right there.”

When Illilyl began to push in, half of Jem rejected the very notion of it _pushing into_ his belly. The other half of him was too lost in sensation for anything like thought. Jem stretched between horror and pleasure like a man on a rack. The horror began to melt away with each agonizing measure of progress Illilyl made, and then finally he pushed in the last half-inch with a grunt, and Jem lost himself altogether.

“Jem? Jem?”

“I’m here,” Jem said muzzily. The edge of the bath pressed into his shoulder blades, and Illilyl was hanging onto him, with his legs wrapped around Jem’s hips. His shaft was lodged in Jem’s belly. Each minute shift of Illilyl’s weight felt strange and good, but less urgent than before.

Oh. That was because Jem had come. He felt warmer now. Looser. “Are you—what’s happening? Have you—?”

“Not yet. Are you comfortable?”

“Mm,” Jem said. He shifted a little, just to feel that alien, ecstatic pressure inside him. He’d be hard again before too long, he thought. “I guess they made me pretty functional after all.”

Illilyl rumbled in his throat. He was laughing. 

Jem warmed with a feeling that had nothing to do with his slit or the temperature of the water. “Come on, then,” he said, shoving lightly at Illilyl’s ribs.

“I need—” Illilyl bowed his head almost to Jem’s shoulder. He gave an experimental thrust, lighting up a whole landscape of nerves Jem hadn’t even known he had. 

Jem groaned and palmed Illilyl’s ass, pulling him in. “Come _on_.”

“I—” Illilyl grunted, and there, something was happening in that strange place in Jem’s gut, something new and peculiar. It felt cool, like the tickle behind his lungs of cold water drunk on a hot day. It felt good.

Illilyl grunted again, and the feeling grew. Coolness pooled in Jem’s belly. He closed his eyes and sank into the alien sensation, delicious and good. Illilyl breathed against Jem’s shoulder, his head hanging heavy. Jem stroked Illilyl’s back in wordless encouragement.

They went on like that for a while, Jem bracing for Illilyl’s shallow thrusts, feeling Illilyl’s grunts in his chest where they were pressed together, skin-to-skin. Each grunt meant more of that feeling in Jem’s gut that he was almost getting used to, fluid and chilled, like a spring welling up in him. Then came the moment when there was almost too much of it. He felt full, almost, in a place he’d never been full before. He shifted, trying to get comfortable.

“All right?” Illilyl rasped.

“Yeah. Yeah. Are you almost done?”

Illilyl pulled back far enough to just about look Jem in the eye. “I don’t think so.”

“Oh,” Jem said, barely a sound, just a breath in the shape of a word. “Okay.”

“Are you in pain?”

Jem closed his eyes and gave himself the internal survey he was used to doing after a battle—or in the middle of one, if he took a bad hit. His back ached from holding most of Illilyl’s weight. The skin across his shoulder blades was raw from scraping against the edge of the bath. He focused on his gut, searching for anything that might signal something wrong, supposing he could even recognize it. At last he said, “It just feels weird. Different, I mean, from how it felt weird before.”

“I think I’m over halfway now.”

“Okay.” Jem was exhausted by the thought. For peace, he told himself wryly. “Are you—how are feeling? Is it pleasurable for you?”

“Can you not tell?” Illilyl sounded surprised. At the shake of Jem’s head, Illilyl said, “Do you see the blue-purple at my throat?” He made an aborted motion with his shoulder.

Jem craned his neck to look. Illilyl was right—he’d darkened to the purple of a bruise, of a late-evening sky. Jem thumbed up the side of Illilyl’s neck and was rewarded with a shiver. “That’s what pleasure looks like on you, huh?”

“The passage of the eggs feels—” Illilyl’s hips stuttered, catching he and Jem both by surprise. More of that wet feeling pooled in Jem’s gut. “—it feels very good,” Illilyl finished, bending his mouth to Jem’s ear again. “You feel very good.”

Jem flushed with utterly ordinary pleasure. Then Illilyl groaned through another egg, and the moment was gone. Jem massaged himself where he’d begun to feel a little pressure, down deep, just between his pubic bone and his slit. He took deep, open-mouthed breaths, focusing on how his chest pressed flush against Illilyl’s with each inhale and trying to ignore the tension building in his gut.

 _For peace_ , he told himself. _For peace._

There came a time when kneading the flesh of his belly was only distraction instead of relief. Jem groaned every time Illilyl moved even a little, and he groaned when he was still, for that’s when the eggs came. Jem felt heavy, swollen taut, aching with a deep, unfamiliar ache. His skin was tight under his palm. His breath grew ragged. He dug his fingers into Illilyl’s shoulders, and tried not to cry out, and waited for it to end.

And then he did cry out, yelping in pain and surprise. 

Illilyl was retreating, pulling out of him at last. His shaft chafed Jem’s oversensitive slit. Illilyl unwound his legs from Jem’s hips and stepped back in the water, and it was over. It was over. 

“Jem,” Illilyl said. The word sounded urgent. It took Jem a moment to look up. He was startled by Illilyl’s hand approaching his face, but he was too tired to move. Illilyl touched his face. After a while, Jem realized he was wiping tears from the corners of Jem’s eyes. Jem had been crying.

“By the saints,” Jem said raggedly. “Fuck.”

“Are you injured?”

“I don’t—I don’t know.”

“We should get out of the water.”

That seemed an odd thing for Illilyl to say, of all people, but Jem let Illilyl guide him up the bath’s steps, a hand at Jem’s waist to steady him. Jem was too exhausted to feel awkward at this strange intimacy. His body seemed to drag twice as heavy walking out of the water as it had going in; each step felt as though he was lifting a foot of stone.

Illilyl sat him on the bed. Jem watched him go, not thinking to ask where he went. He returned soon with a towel from the rack by the bath. “Your people are very particular about water,” Illilyl observed. Jem sat still as Illilyl toweled him off. When he came around to Jem’s belly, he offered Jem the towel. “Perhaps you’d like to do this part.”

Jem stared at the towel in his hands—dyed crimson, his mother’s color. Then, at last, he let himself look down.

He was not as swollen as he’d expected. His belly had a definite curve to it that hadn’t been there before, but the tightness, the pressure—that was mostly inside, it seemed. His slit was red and inflamed, and it stung when he touched it.

Illilyl caught his hands before he could experiment any more. “I believe it’s often like this, the first time. Our physicians gave you something for this, yes? Oils?”

“I think—I think so. In—” Jem gestured vaguely towards the shelves by the bed. 

Illilyl went away and returned again with a vial. “Would you prefer to do it?”

“You do it,” Jem said tiredly. He leaned back on his hands, shut his eyes, and braced against the sting of Illilyl’s touch. The burn was soon gone, though—chilled and then numbed by the oil Illilyl was working gently around his slit. When that was done, Jem said, “Can you—on my back?”

Illilyl crawled around behind him on the bed and then hissed at what he saw. “Next time we will do this somewhere else.”

“Next time,” Jem repeated.

Illilyl’s hands stilled. “If we choose to, of course.”

“If our nations require it, you mean.”

There was a pause long enough that Jem wondered if he’d dozed off and missed Illilyl’s reply. “You are not what I expected, Jem of the earth.”

“Oh, no?” As Illilyl soothed the raw places on Jem’s back, he felt himself edging nearer and nearer to sleep.

Illilyl finished and capped the vial. He came to sit on the edge of the bed, at Jem’s side. He looked very solemn, but then, he always did. “You must know your reputation among us. The naval captain, the victor of many battles, the son of the ruler of the earth. Your reputation is one of war.”

Well, now Jem was awake, kind of. “This treaty is more important than any battle I could fight. I worked hard for it. We did, your people and I.”

“So the rumors said, but I found it hard to believe.”

“And now?” Jem said warily.

“You don’t even have any ear-fins,” Illilyl said, which was so far outside the realm of what Jem expected that he could only stare. “You haven’t but two colors, which you use for everything, and your face is a mystery of shapes I can’t interpret, and your palace is made of stone, and it is—”

“Yes?” Jem prompted, when Illilyl’s silence started to concern him.

“It is very far from the sea.”

Only a day’s ride. It was why the wedding had been arranged to happen now, for the summer palace was the house of state nearest the water. Clearly this was of little comfort to Illilyl, whose throat and inner arms—and, yes, his ear-fins—had darkened with those patterns of marks that Jem was learning to recognize for sorrow.

Jem took Illilyl’s hand. He didn’t know if the sea folk held hands for comfort. He didn’t know anything of their intimacies at all, except what he’d experienced in the past two hours. Still, he squeezed Illilyl’s fingers between his and said, “I’ll teach you about my face, all right? And you can tell me what all your marks and colors mean. We’ll learn.”

Illilyl met Jem’s gaze, his own ever-unreadable.

“That’s part of our purpose in this, isn’t it? To learn. Together?” he said, too hopefully, but he was tired beyond belief and a mass of aches, and, barring disaster, he was pregnant. He had no subtlety left in him.

Illilyl thumbed across Jem’s knuckles. The pad of his thumb was pebbly and thick. Then, to Jem’s astonishment, Illilyl leaned in and pressed a kiss to Jem’s mouth. He was gone before Jem could respond. “Together,” Illilyl said. It sounded like a promise; like a beginning.

[end]


End file.
